Are CIOs up to scratch as communicators?

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The CIO’s job is, by definition, all about information. But on a personal level, just how good are IT leaders at communicating? My latest feature for silicon.com investigates:

The clue is in the job title - the CIO’s role is all about information. A great IT leader manages data to create useful intelligence for the business.

Such knowledge is the lifeblood of the organisation. Executives across different lines of business can use up-to-date information to make crucial decisions about internal projects and external customer-facing services.

Malcolm Simpkin, CIO of Aviva, agrees with the sentiment that the IT leader plays a crucial role in helping to create intelligence for the business. The information-aware CIO, he says, is more than simply a necessary executive evil.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Co-op Financial Services’ Jim Slack discusses social media

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The finance sector is famously behind other industries in the use of social media. Co-operative Financial Services IT chief Jim Slack aims to change that situation, as my latest feature for silicon.com shows.

Financial services firms are probably not the first type of business you would think of when it comes to the adoption of social media. In fact, they might be the last.

silicon.com recently reported the suggestion that case law from 1924 prevents finance companies from publicly identifying an individual who has an account with them, which makes responding to customer queries via social media a potential legal minefield.

Other reports regularly suggest banking CIOs have been slow to adopt social media. But Jim Slack, the business leader of IT operations and development at Co-operative Financial Services (CFS), is encouraging his organisation to take a different stance.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Should CIOs be worried about their next career move?

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Does the central role of information in every organisation make the CIO utterly indispensable or merely a spectator in the democratisation of data? Here’s my latest analysis for silicon.com:

It is one of the oldest gags in IT leadership. Rather than chief information officer, CIO actually stands for career is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The role of the CIO is actually very much alive. Successful IT leaders are eschewing the traditional management of IT operations and instead concentrating on the strategic use of information for the benefit of the business.

Such a strategic role is crucial because of the continued rise of collaborative systems, unstructured data and on-demand technology. Now, more than ever before, the CIO truly is the executive responsible for information – and information is the lifeblood of the successful business in this collaborative and on-demand world.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

CIOs share seven tips for social media strategy

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Here is another of my features for silicon.com, which presents advice from technology leaders on creating successful engagement through social technology:

Social networking has become a key medium for interacting with colleagues, contacts and customers. So why are some businesses still scared to let their employees engage?

As many as 48 per cent of companies still ban their staff from accessing social networks at work, according to research from HCL. The survey suggests many executives believe social tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, are too distracting from day-to-day activities.

That perception can be a challenge for modern CIOs who are charged with moderating communication channels, while ensuring the continual flow of information. Below, leading business executives provide seven tips for creating successful engagement through social technology.

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Consumerisation is the elephant in the room for CIOs

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I’m just putting the final touches to the summer edition of CIO Connect magazine. As usual, there’s a strong focus on IT leadership but there’s also a take on consumerisation, which will be the topic for CIO Connect’s annual conference later this year.

Entitled Power to the people?, the scene for the conference was set in the spring edition of the magazine, from which the following slice of the editorial is lifted:

Now people have access to better technology at home than in the office, it has become almost de rigueur to be able to show off a bunch of cool apps on your latest Steve Jobs device.

One CIO mentioned to me recently how his 10-strong board had been given iPads. It was, he believed, the epitome of forward thinking. Other companies have taken a similar strategy, giving devices to executives on the move.

Some IT leaders are honest enough to admit that the device is mainly used to keep their children happy playing ‘Angry Birds’. Others, however, are convinced the device provides the future of enterprise connectivity.

But there is an elephant in the room: consumerisation, which turns the traditional model of IT procurement inside out. Increasing number of users are buying their own devices and expecting the business to provide secure connectivity.

Another CIO mentioned to me recently how he was surprised that Apple seemed less concerned by enterprise than consumer concerns. But why should the technology giant’s focus be the enterprise?

A purchase order of 10 iPads for a single company looks diminutive next to global consumer tablet sales. Estimates suggest that by year-end 2010, Apple had sold somewhere near 15 million iPads.

It does not stop there. Analysts expect the technology giant to ship as many as 30 million units of its second-generation iPad during its first year of sales. In short, Apple and innovative technology peers such as Google are helping to break the traditional model of enterprise computing.

Rather than licences and devices being purchased internally, employers are picking their own technology and expecting to be able to plug and play. It is a development which creates new and rapidly emerging challenges for the CIO. Are you ready?

My contribution to the 1986 BBC Domesday project is online

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A PR representing the BBC has been working hard to get my attention with regards to Auntie’s attempts to upload, and reload, the 1980s Domesday Project. The pitch in itself is not surprising because, well, that is what PRs are supposed to do. But I was pleasantly surprised to be targeted.

My pleasure comes from the fact that I have a special place in my heart for the original BBC Domesday project. As I wrote in a piece for IT trade paper Computing in 2003, the scheme was set up to mark the 900th anniversary of William the Conqueror’s original Domesday Book in 1086 and was intended to provide a snapshot of British life in the late 20th century.

The new Domesday provided a cute collection of information. But as I also wrote eight years ago, while the data in William the Conqueror’s original manuscript is still accessible 900 years on, the pace of change in technology meant that the BBC Domesday project had become inaccessible. Mid-1980s video disc technology had been superseded by portable compact disc systems. And the LDV hardware used to run the BBC project’s video-discs was in short supply.

Which was particularly upsetting for me. You see, I was in the original Domesday project (the BBC one, not the one from 1066). When I was kid, I lived in a place called Hampton Magna. It is a small village outside Warwick (in fact, it is close to the site of a deserted village called Budbrooke which was in the 1066 Domesday but which was wiped out by the plague). However, I digress. As I wrote in the Computing article of 2003:

“I never won much as a child, so I was genuinely proud when I was chosen to represent my school on the BBC Domesday project … I was asked to provide a description of my house in Hampton Magna.”

The Computing piece subsequently detailed the attempts of researchers at the University of Leeds to preserve the Domesday material. I remember that they were lovely chaps, even providing hard copies of my data for illustrations in the magazine. Anyway, I completed my editorial folly in Computing with the following conclusion:

“Thanks to the emulator, the BBC Domesday is available again. Now it’s time to sort out the copyright situation and make its treasure trove of data accessible to us all.”

And almost exactly eight years later, those issues seem to have been sorted. BBC Learning today unveiled its resurrection of the 1986 Domesday project and a dedicated web site called Domesday Reloaded. And yes, MARKS [sic] HOUSE IN HAMPTON MAGNA is there (as well as pictures from the school summer fete).

It is, as you can see, a work of low-level genius. But it was my first publication and I loved going to look at the description on the BBC Micro at Warwick Library as a kid. BBC Domesday – it is good to have you back, old friend.

How CIOs are hiring and engaging with staff

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Whether blogging about their area of expertise or tweeting about business best practice, more CIOs are choosing to express their views through collaborative technology. Here’s my latest feature for silicon.com about the use of social media by IT leaders:

More senior IT leaders are beginning to dabble in social media and are finding new ways to help the business. So, where will social CIOs go next? Do IT leaders use social media to attract potential employees and do they use collaborative tools to keep new workers engaged?

Kcom Group started to use social media for recruitment in 2010, establishing a Twitter account for potential openings. Dean Branton, director of customer operations and group CIO at the telecoms specialist, said the organisation’s LinkedIn recruitment pages launched earlier this year and are focused on building a network of contacts.

“We have a full recruiter seat on LinkedIn, which allows us to proactively search for candidates, whose information can be imported into a PDF for hiring managers to review,” Branton said. The group’s Kcom recruitment page also provides links to relevant web sites and testimonials from current employees.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Social networks blur CIOs’ work and outside lives

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The consumerisation of IT is pushing social media onto the business agenda and blurring links between CIOs and their external lives, according to my latest feature for silicon.com:

JLT Group CIO Ian Cohen is a social media fan who has encouraging words for IT leaders wondering how to straddle the gap between personal and business identities to make the most of online collaboration tools.

“Try it,” Cohen said. “Give it a go, based on the type of things that interest you. The CIO needs to lead the debate on social media for the chief executive, so it makes sense to develop your position.” Finance CIO Cohen is a prolific user of social media, tweeting about business, football and music from his @coe62 account.

He is also a fan of LinkedIn and Facebook, and has taken steps to test enterprise-ready social tools behind the JLT firewall. When it comes to the divide between business and personal life on social media, Cohen suggests the links between work and external lives are blurring at an executive level.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

How to get providers to buy into your agenda

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The days of supplier relationships simply being about establishing a one-to-one partnership seem to be over. The complexity of modern provider relationships requires new approaches, as illustrated by this feature by me for silicon.com on supplier engagement:

People, so the popular adage goes, buy from people. That maxim is particularly true in business IT, where CIOs must first understand line-of-business demands and then create effective relationships with key suppliers to produce anticipated benefits.

But how can CIOs engage with providers to meet those much-desired business outcomes and what type of challenges will need to be overcome? In many cases, the supplier relationship is no longer as simple as the establishment of a one-to-one partnership.

The days of a company outsourcing its IT to a single provider are fast becoming a thing of the past. The total value of contracts worth €20m or more stood at €10.5bn at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010, according to outsourcing advisory firm TPI. That total, although significant, represented a 31 per cent drop from the fourth quarter of 2009 figure.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Social media pushes CIOs and marketing closer together

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For CIOs, one thing is certain: the increasing interest in social media means IT leaders now have to spend more time with the marketing executive. Here’s my latest feature for silicon.com, which shows that a successful social strategy requires a confluence of CIO and CMO expertise:

From Facebook pages to Twitter profiles, executives round the board table will be expecting someone in the organisation to establish the organisation’s social-media strategy. While social media provides a means for the chief marketing officer (CMO) to engage with potential customers, it is the CIO who will be expected to provide the technical knowledge to make such digital marketing strategies a business reality.

“I spend more time now with the chief commercial officer, who is responsible to marketing, because of the criticality of social media,” said easyJet CIO Trevor Didcock, when asked whether he has spent more time with the marketing department during the past 12 months.

Didcock recognises the web and social media are crucial, yet he also recognises the business could do more, suggesting that many of his company’s activities – such as advertising on Facebook and recruitment through LinkedIn – are reactive rather than proactive. The answer is a confluence of CIO and CMO expertise.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.